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There are few things in life I can claim to have in common with Katie Price.

Well, I did once make it as a centrefold. But that was because a choir I used to sing with was featured in the middle pages of a local newspaper.

Anyway, the staples blocked out my vitals. What we do share, however, is the experience of having a young daughter who has been caught with her fingers in the cosmetic cake tin.

Katie Price came under fire for allowing her eight year old daughter to wear make up.

The difference is that while the 37 year-old model endorses her little girl's unreconstructed use of hot pink lipstick and spider leg mascara, I don't. Instead I have to battle with my 11 year-old daughter, Sophie, who feels that it's perfectly normal to dust her peachy young skin with blusher (or "blush" as she calls it) and clog her lash line with clumps of kohl.

Katie Price continues to defy critics, after being spotted leaving the New Victoria Theatre in Woking the other night with her daughter Princess Tiaamii caked in make up Indeed she has posted a defiant video on Instagram in which her feisty youngster defends herself. ("By the way, I want to do my make-up, not my mum. I do. And anyway, it's none of your beeswax! So oosh!") Oosh, indeed.

Katie Price has been criticised for allowing her eight year-old daughter to wear make up.

It may well be that Price's endorsement of her daughter's painted pout is little more than an extension of the commercially lucrative narcissism on which she has built her own career. But for normal mums down here on Planet Earth, the challenge of pre-pubescent daughters wanting to wear makeup remains an enduring issue.

My own little girl deploys slightly more subtle tactics when she tries to leave the house with a dash of war paint. Sophie will wait until the very last minute before we go out (ooh, somewhere exciting like Sainsbury's or an inevitable dawdle round Claire's Accessories) before coming downstairs, running to get her coat and leaping into the car.

Children shouldn't feel the need to wear make up yet.

What she doesn't factor into her rather 007 manoeuvre is that her mother's antennae twitch at the first whiff of strawberry powder colliding with her soft, flawless face. We then go through a now well-worn ritual in which Sophie is dispatched upstairs and told to take the make up off Which, after robust resistance – but thankfully minus Princess's attitude - she does.

"The onset of puberty in girls was 14.6 years in 1920, compared to 10.5 in 2010"

Of course you may wonder where she's getting her cosmetics from. To my knowledge there's no gumshoe pre-teen pedalling Rimmel at pocket money prices. Instead Sophie either squirrels away old bits of lipstick and eyeshadow from my own burgeoning selection. Or she collects magazine free gifts (both hers and mine).

Unlike Jordan, the price, however, is never right. Not that the model and her daughter are alone in gilding the lily. Thanks to that heinous State-side import known as the beauty pageant, legions of little girls are spray-painted like little Lolita’s to prove, ironically, how pretty they are. There's no doubt little girls are growing up quicker too.

Beauty pageants encourage excessive use of make-up in young children.

A survey last year by online retailer Escentual.com, found that more girls than ever are starting to wear make-up from the age of 11 - three years younger than it was a decade ago. The reasons are doubtless multi-factorial. To begin with, the onset of puberty in girls was 14.6 years in 1920, compared to 10.5 in 2010.

"Allowing her to leave the house wearing make up at this tender age would both ritualise and normalise it. And I'm simply not prepared to do that"

Research, including a study last year by Plymouth University, constantly flags up the link between obesity and puberty: it's thought excess weight triggers fast hormonal changes in children's bodies. Meanwhile, aside from peer pressure, there's reality television and social media which drip feed images of painted perfection onto the screens of little girls already acutely aware of their appearance.

So what's the answer? As a mother, I could arrange a makeup amnesty – with or without Sophie's compliance. Just sweep away those tacky bits of lipstick and sky blue eyeliners she secretes in her bedroom and throw them into the bin.

Playing with make-up can be a rite of passage for little girls.

The irony is I have no problem with her playing with makeup. For little girls, it's a rite of passage. I did it myself (although in a limited way, since my late mum's cosmetic collection extending little beyond a coral lipstick and some creamy "rouge").

But allowing her to leave the house wearing make up at this tender age would both ritualise and normalise it. And I'm simply not prepared to do that.

I can already see my little girl growing up in so many ways – and I want to encourage her imagination and independence. We just don't need a slick of lipstick to sign off her childhood just yet.

Of course Queen Katie and her princess may disagree. But then it's none of their beeswax. Pity this mother/daughter combo makes it ours.